Melinda May Ficlets
by goldenegg31
Summary: Assorted ficlets based on TV Tropes written for Melinda May Appreciation Week on Tumblr. Tropes include Memetic Badass, Almighty Janitor, Cutting the Knot, Made of Iron, When She Smiles, Not So Above It All, Team Mom, and Alliterative Name.
1. Living LegendMemetic Badass

A/N: I don't own anything. Many thanks to ElementalLiz, who is my awesome and patient beta. Pretty much all of the ficlets were inspired at least in part by regionsofkindness on Tumblr, who writes the most amazing May meta.

May does not regret her decision to leave the field after Bahrain. It was traumatic. She needs time to work through it. She does, however, regret her increased exposure to the less mature agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

She first notices it out of the corner of her eye on a coworker's desk when she passes it while leaving for lunch. It is an image of her in an email. The text on the image reads, "Death had a near-Melinda May experience." She is not pleased. To put it lightly.

So she goes to Barton. He knows all the gossip. Reluctantly, he tells her that there is a series of emails with similar images going around S.H.I.E.L.D. They are calling her The Cavalry. She is furious. She did what was needed, nothing more; it is not something to be admired. She wishes everyone would forget about it. She wishes she could forget about it. No. She does not wish to forget. She wishes to be past it.

So she goes to Fury. She tells him to stop the emails. He tells her it's a meme, that there's no stopping it until its run its course and something else grabs people's attention. She tells him to stop the emails. He sighs.

Two days later, during an op in Australia, Barton makes a spectacular shot – while falling into kangaroo shit. Coulson gets footage. Barton's over-the-top reenactments in the Triskelion cafeteria only add to the general hilarity.

S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn't forget about Bahrain and she never escapes that stupid nickname, but at least the emails stop and she's left in peace. Just how she likes it.


	2. Almighty JanitorRetired Badass

May doesn't enjoy spending her days in a cubicle. She knows she could quit, leave this line of work. Go fly planes for a commercial airline or something. She doesn't want to. She took a beating, and not just a physical one, that day they started calling her The Cavalry, but she's not weak. She hurts, but Melinda May doesn't fall to pieces.

Instead, she staples files. Turns down offer after offer to join this team or consult on that mission. One idiot accuses her of hiding from her past. She doesn't say anything. She doesn't need to explain herself. She knows what she needs. She's not hiding. She's healing. She heals enough that when the time Phil Coulson comes to her cubicle telling her that he only wants her to fly his plane (as if), she says yes. She doesn't feel ready to get back into it. But she knows herself. She can do this now.


	3. Cutting the Knot

S.H.I.E.L.D. employs some of the cleverest people in the world. They spend hours making plans within plans, trying to figure out the best ways to outwit their enemies. And while they're plotting, May's broken down the door, rescued the hostages or whatever this week's mission is, and gotten back to base. So she's a little impatient. No one's perfect.


	4. Made of Iron

May has been in far too many combat situations for someone who was just supposed to be the pilot. She's angry about that, but probably less than she should be. It's not like she wasn't expecting it.

After Bahrain, what's physical pain, anyway? She can deal with being beat up and shot. It hurts, it makes her mad, but it's just an injury. She's not made of iron because she can survive wounds the others can't. It's beneath the skin where she's truly iron.


	5. Sugar Ice PersonalityWhen She Smiles

p dir="ltr"Not long after Coulson first puts our team together, I'm working on some formula when Fitz makes a joke that manages to amuse May. That's not what really surprises me, though. The way May's demeanor changes when she smiles - it's astonishing./p 


	6. Not So Above It All

p dir="ltr"Melinda May has many areas of expertise. She is an ace pilot, has more black belts than fingers, and knows exactly how many cups of water it takes to cover every surface of Fury's office. Unfortunately, it is this last fact that has come to her teammates' attention./p 


	7. Team Mom

May was surprised when Skye knocked on the door of her motel room at 4:35 am with breakfast on Sunday the 11th. She'd been teaching Skye tai chi, but the last few days Skye had stumbled into her room right at 5 am. Just yesterday, Skye had asked how early May had to get up to look so good that early. Oh. Interesting. This had been planned.

"What's with the special treatment?"

Skye mumbled something about this being something people did today, but looked so embarrassed that May started the lesson without further interrogation.

It was only later, when calling her own mother to wish her a Happy Mother's Day, that she realized why Skye had brought her breakfast.


	8. Alliterative Name

When she was a child, there were few things she hated more than her first name. Melinda? Really? Giving her daughter a name that meant 'gentle' – she sometimes wondered what her mother had been thinking. Melinda called to mind some delicate little girl, the sort who cried whenever she so much as scraped her knee and who needed to be protected from the harshness of the world. Not that there was anything wrong with that; it was just that Melinda was pretty much the opposite of who she was and who her mom was raising her to be.

When she turned eighteen, she seriously considered changing her first name to something badass. When her mom heard her reasons, she got very quiet and then very intense. Apparently, the whole point of Melinda was that even though you couldn't always show Melinda on the outside, it was still okay to be Melinda. That it was okay to need help. Her mom gave her that name to always remind both of them that.

As an adult, she barely uses her first name. But she no longer hates that she sometimes is Melinda, even if she doesn't show it.


End file.
